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I think I understand. I'll have to see the work. You apply the paint, probably using rounds, then wipe with rags or sponges back into canvas. The choice of pigment is important because some colors really take to this and others don't. After wiping through, you paint back the darker, and wipe with solvent for highlights.
There is a technique in drawing where you cover the paper with charcoal first, wipe it off, draw, and work back and forth between eraser and more charcoal.
I combined the chalk and the oil wipe with varnishes and spay cans for some Vietnam anti-war paintings which gave them a kind of documentary bad photo look. These went over like a greasy chorizo fart in a small seminar room.
God all this art talk ... I bought a nice book of Caroline Jones, Bay Area Figurative School (Park, Diebenkorn, Bischoff, etc). The techniques in most of these painters was pretty heavy with a lot of paint and wet in wet. It's the `opposite' of the inscrutable surface.
In all my years in painting class, I never ran across a single painter who just dealt with the technical side, except Burkhardt. He had spent a long time under Gorky and de Kooning. They were really into paint as paint. Here's Burkhardt My Lai:
http://bedlammagazine.com/files/images/bur0404(150)%2B.jpg
Burkhardt would walk up to your painting, mix some ugly color on the palette, and then proceed to paint on your painting. This was a real shock. But I got used to it and listened and watched. What you actually saw was how to paint like Burkhardt. But that really didn't matter so much. At least you could learn from it.
CG